"Thai-Style Democracy": A Conservative Struggle for Thailand's Politics

Kevin Hewison, 7 Jul 2009

Kevin Hewison, professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented his paper 'Thai-Style Democracy' at the Faculty of Political Science of Chulalongkorn University on June 26, 2009. The paper is published here in full.

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I have seldom presented papers in Thailand. The principal reason for this is that I have always considered myself a student of Thai politics, learning from the work of Thai scholars and researchers. Indeed, in the something like 30 years that I have been learning about Thailand, it has been the faculty in the Department of Political Science, together with those in the Faculty of Economics here at Chula, who have been my respected teachers.

Today I feel like a student presenting some of his ideas to his professors and hope that you find it a useful paper that might stimulate discussion and some critical commentary.

The topic is "Thai-Style Democracy". I did have a sub-title which referred to something about "A Royalist Struggle for Thailand's Politics." You can understand that with a topic like this, I am going to have to speak in English as, for reasons that are all too well known, I need to be careful in what I say. For the same reason, I will read my paper.

Let me begin with three disclaimers.

First, in this presentation, my emphasis is almost solely on TSD (prachathippatai baep thai). In making this my focus, I do not wish to imply that this is the only discourse on the nature of governance in Thailand or even the most significant one at all times. That would be misleading. The point of my focus on TSD is to highlight a set of ideas that has, over 5 decades, continually been resurrected and reiterated in on-going struggles over political power. Each time it has been repeated or revised, it has been a contested discourse. That TSD has been - and continues to be - challenged and debated should be kept in mind as I focus on TSD.

Second, while I am writing about history I am not writing a history. I will leap over many important periods of political struggles without a mention. My point is simply to highlight the ideas about TSD.

The third disclaimer is that I recognize that the ideas outlined here as TSD have considerable resonance in other places and in other times. TSD is not a set of ideas that is unique to Thailand, despite the designation used here. However, by focusing on the particular form and history of TSD I hope to highlight how this set of ideas has been developed in Thailand and how it has been politically contested.

In this presentation, I hope to examine the conservative foundations of TSD both in terms of its development and also in the context of recent attempts to embed various political and ideological forms associated with TSD. The most recent reinvigoration of TSD has been associated with the political struggles following the so-called good coup of 2006.

Continue at English thaiindy.org